


A Solitary Life

by Juniperly



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam is Crowley's family for some reason but he's only barely mentioned, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Established Relationship, Growing Old, Immortality, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Not A Happy Ending, Not Canon Compliant, or it's established very fast anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21813484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juniperly/pseuds/Juniperly
Summary: The first time he seems Crowley, Aziraphale thinks the man looks younger than he really is. He doesn’t let that fool him. After all, he has seen how humans age. Thirty, forty years, and he will be withered, perhaps unrecognisably so. And really, that’s such a short amount of time. Aziraphale has taken longer to find misplaced books. He has waistcoats who will outlive this human by a century.The man is kneeling in the community garden, carefully pruning a tomato plant. His clothes seem terribly impractical for the task, ridiculously tight pants and snakeskin boots. Aziraphale stops his stroll to watch him from a few paces away. He’s rather striking, all those long limbs and bright hair and slender hips.// Angsty human AU where only Crowley is human.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	A Solitary Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction so... be kind with me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy :)

The first time he seems Crowley, Aziraphale thinks the man looks younger than he really is. He doesn’t let that fool him. After all, he has seen how humans age. Thirty, forty years, and he will be withered, perhaps unrecognisably so. And really, that’s such a short amount of time. Aziraphale has taken longer to find misplaced books. He has waistcoats who will outlive this human by a century.

The man is kneeling in the community garden, carefully pruning a tomato plant. His clothes seem terribly impractical for the task, ridiculously tight pants and snakeskin boots. Aziraphale stops his stroll to watch him from a few paces away. He’s rather striking, all those long limbs and bright hair and slender hips.

“Can I help you?” The man says, voice dripping with sarcasm. 

Aziraphale blinks. “Oh – sorry, my dear, I hadn’t meant to disturb.” He pauses, trying to think of something to say that will conceal his extremely limited knowledge of plants. “Are the tomatoes…well?”

He turns around to look at him, and rises, serpentine, into a standing position. The dark lenses of his sunglasses catch the morning light. “Would be better if one the idiots around here looked after them.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale says, feeling a little stupid. The man is awfully attractive, and Aziraphale is usually very good at small talk but he’s painfully aware of the awkwardness right now. 

“Crowley.” He says.

“Beg your pardon?” He thinks the man flushes slightly.

“That’s my name. If you want it.”

“Right, yes.” The man – Crowley – looks at him expectantly. “It’s, um, Aziraphale.”

So it begins.

\--

“Oh – oh Crowley, for the love of everything sacred, you cannot go this speed in central London.” 

Crowley smirks, “Sure I can. Watch me. I’m doing it, right now.” But his fingers tighten imperceptibly on the steering wheel, and there’s a drop in speed, albeit rather insignificant.

Aziraphale sighs and started shifting through music in a desperate attempt to ignore the concerned pedestrians. “You have an awful lot of Queen, dear.”

“They have variety. Put on some Velvet Underground angel. That’s the good stuff.” 

Aziraphale, who has heard every major song across countless cultures for thousands of years, rather doubts this assessment, but concedes anyway. 

\--

Aziraphale doesn’t have parents for Crowley to meet, which is fine by him because Crowley doesn’t want to imagine what kind of painfully gracious creatures must have raised someone with Aziraphale’s mannerisms. He mentions an adopted family – _a few siblings, I’m afraid we don’t get on particularly well, we’re all quite distant these days_ – and Crowley, who knows a thing or two about complicated families, accepts this explanation. 

Crowley does take Aziraphale to meet his cousins though, in Tadfield. It’s a terribly awkward affair, but Aziraphale had insisted on meeting any family Crowley had, and this is as good as it’s going to get. Aziraphale talks to Diedre and Arthur about crotchet (“you simply must try this pattern”) and the weather (“terribly gloomy, isn’t it?”) and The State of Politics (“awful business, Brexit”) and What The Neighbours Are Up To (“I think they’re arguing about which tiles to use in the bathroom again, don’t you, Arthur?”) and a hundred other topics Crowley knows Aziraphale finds dreadfully dull but is remarkably adept in conversing about anyway. 

Crowley, for his part, helps Adam with his science homework and drinks far too much tea.

\--

Crowley notices, eventually. He’s looking at old pictures (not that he’s sentimental, he’s not so saccharine), and they’re perfectly arranged in a photo album, of course (Aziraphale isn’t some _heathen_ ), and there, there’s one of them a few days after they met. Aziraphale, holding an ice-cream cone, smiling at the camera. _Stupidly photogenic_ , and, Crowley thinks, examining Aziraphale’s face from across the room, absorbed in a 18th century poetry book, _exactly the same_. 

Still. It’s only been a few years. Crowley hasn’t changed that much either. 

\--

“Good genetics,” Aziraphale lies, when Crowley asks him the first time. “And my hair is practically white anyway, so you can’t really tell.” Crowley accepts his answers. Aziraphale is guilty, and grateful. 

\--

Aziraphale knows things he shouldn’t. He always has, and Crowley wrote it off to good intuition. 

Still. Some things aren’t quite right.

Aziraphale’s clothes don’t stain. His clothes don’t do anything really, they stay the same, two hundred years out of fashion. 

And the bookshop. If Aziraphale had thrice as many customers as he currently has, he would perhaps be a third of as financially successful as he currently seems to be. Maybe, Crowley thinks, he has a lot of inheritance. He doesn’t like to talk about his family, so for all Crowley knows, he could be descended from a line of filthy rich merchants. 

Aziraphale seems slightly more out of touch with modern technology than he should be. _Some people are like that_. And his wines are old enough that collectors would fight in a gladiator ring for them. _He’s a collector of vintage items, so what?_ And Crowley isn’t one to complain about too much good wine. 

Aziraphale doesn’t get hangovers. He’s never tired. His flat above the bookshop had a conspicuous lack of bed the first time Crowley visited, but when he came back later that day, there’s a bedroom where Crowley could have sworn there hadn’t been one. 

Crowley hasn’t even begun to think about how Aziraphale tells history like he was right there.

\--

Aziraphale ends up in heaven, signing some paperwork, and Gabriel interrogates him. 

“You seem to spend a lot of time around that human.”

“He needs a lot of guidance.” _Not entirely untrue_. “And it’s good to spend time with humans. I’ve got to stay in touch, after all.”

If Gabriel is skeptical, he doesn’t say anything else.

\--

At first, Crowley thinks Aziraphale is just one of those people who’ve rolled the right numbers on the set of die in the game of the universe. Just…lucky. But these things happen, again, and again, and again. There’s always a parking spot. Someone’s reservation has always just been cancelled when they walk into a restaurant. Crowley’s car never breaks down, no matter what. And it should, it’s fucking ancient and it’s been surviving on Crowley’s constant maintenance all these years.

\--

He tells him, eventually. Crowley was suspicious already, and better sooner than later.

It does not go well.

“You’re a _what_?”

“Angel, dear.”

Crowley leaves the bookshop that night and Aziraphale doesn’t hear from him for a week. He gets a call at midnight, on the eighth day, and ends up explaining a lot of things he probably shouldn’t about demons and the afterlife. 

Life goes back to normal. Kind of. They come to a mutual silent agreement to just accept it.

When an angel loves a mortal, time floods their senses. Every second, every minute, every hour. Aziraphale feels each one pass, an eternity within them all. _Be careful_ , he thinks, when he reads his books, _do not grow too distracted, do not get lost for days_ , for he fears when he turns back to look at him, Crowley will have changed.

\--

People stop mistaking Crowley for Aziraphale’s son, or his boytoy – though the latter isn’t exactly _wrong_ , per se. 

Crowley checks every time he sees a mirror. He tugs at laugh lines, ones he’s had for years now, reassures himself of the continuity of his hairline. When he sees the first grey hair, he rips it out. He doesn’t want Aziraphale to worry. But they keep coming, and he finds himself in a pharmacy, staring out the shelves of dyes. He dyes it a shade brighter, pinker, muttering something about wanting to look more fashionable – “this type of red hair isn’t _in_ , right now, angel” – and Aziraphale, used to Crowley’s constant fluctuations, barely blinks. 

Aziraphale catches him prodding his skin in the mirror eventually. He smiles at him, a little sadly, and asks if he’s in the mood for sushi. He isn’t, but they go anyway, and Crowley listens to Aziraphale rank his top twenty sushi places. 

“There was this place – oh, it might even still be there, I feel like I was there just not too long ago at all, somewhere in south Tokyo, it was the best. Absolutely delightful.” He chews some rice thoughtfully, and eventually, twenty minutes later remembers the name, interrupting Crowley’s monologue about his opinions of the varieties of ducks. 

Crowley looks up the restaurant that night, when Aziraphale is absorbed in some dusty old book. Eventually, he finds a fleeting mention in a newspaper archive – he thanks the gods quietly for google translate – closed in 1921, it says, and Aziraphale’s words ring in his ears,

_“Not too long ago at all.”_

And Crowley knows that really, for Aziraphale, a mere century is nothing, gone in a blink of an eye. He ignores the slight pressure building in his eyes and the tightness of his throat and goes to sit with Aziraphale. 

He can buy all the dyes and moisturisers in the world, and it won’t stop the sand from falling through the hourglass. 

\--

Crowley’s eyes have always been sensitive to light, but for the first time he struggles to read the label one of his new flowers.

He feels old.

\--

Aziraphale has done magic in front of Crowley before – small things, you understand, cleaning dishes, fixing unruly curls in his hair, removing stains. 

Crowley had asked when he told him what he was, “Have you done anything to me?”

“Not in the way you mean,” he said, “But I have blessed you.”

“Blessed?”

“You’re … lucky. Your goats will be healthy. Your children will be strong. Kings will marry your daughters. You will not be taken by plague. That kind of thing.” He hesitated. “The traditional side effects of blessing, are, ah, a little outdated.”

Crowley snorted. “Does it extend to lottery tickets?”

“Honestly, probably.”

“My plants haven’t been touched by your magic, have they?”

“No dear, that’s all you.”

\--

They get a passer-by to take a photo of them outside a new art exhibition, and Crowley quietly wonders, if maybe Aziraphale is trying to get as many records of their existence together as possible. 

\--

His hair keeps going grey. He doesn’t dye it anymore. He still wears ridiculous black clothes, but he ends up pulling on another few layers in the colder months, the chill reaching his bones. They sit on a bench in Hyde Park, not terribly far from the community garden where they met. For Crowley, it feels like a lifetime ago. He wonders how long it feels like for Aziraphale. 

“Will I see you after I die?” Crowley knows Aziraphale hates questions like that. He pauses. “Do you die?”

“You will go to heaven,” Aziraphale says, regret etched in his features, “I’ve made sure of that.” He throws bread into a group of ducks, and they swarm around in a writhing, feathery mass. 

It doesn’t answer either of his questions, but he doesn’t push it. 

\--

Crowley asks him about other humans he had known. They are both drunk, heads slightly blurry with the buzz of alcohol, and Aziraphale tells him about Shakespeare – his annoyance at the audience for not interacting with the actors enough, how he would make dirtiest jokes and dress them up in fancy words. He talks about Oscar Wilde, brilliant and witty and punished for things that should never be punished. 

“How many languages do you speak?”

“Most of them are long dead now,” Aziraphale laughs, “I don’t know, to be honest.”

“When do you miss?”

“Rome was delightful. So much culture, so many interesting young men.”

“What do you miss?”

“The gavotte!”

“The what?”

That’s how Crowley ends up learning the gavotte with an overly enthusiastic angel at 3 am. 

\--

It’s a while before Crowley asks what he really wants to know.

It feels the same as before, alcohol inhibiting the senses, the air thick and sweet like honey, sprawled over a chair in Aziraphale’s bookshop. They have had dozens of nights like this, and Crowley wishes he could remember them all.

“Have there been others?”

It’s vague, but he knows Aziraphale will understand.

“Yes. But no-one like you. No-one as important or wonderful or delightful as you.”

“After I am gone, will there be others?”

“I doubt it, my dear.”

\--

Crowley had worried that Aziraphale would slowly become unattracted to him. 

This, it seems, is not the case.

They rock against each-other, warm skin, sweat beading on their backs.

Aziraphale had tried to explain. _Angels are made of magic and souls and intangible, complicated glamour. My body isn’t real in the ways yours is._

Crowley thought this was a lot of bullshit. 

The sensation was real, the chemicals and the feelings and the heat and Aziraphale’s face twisted with delight.

This is real. 

\--

Crowley’s limbs stiffen and lines grow on his face. 

Aziraphale wants to think he knows every scar, every valley and bone, but Crowley's body is so human, ever changing. Even the faintest scratches show on his skin. A sharp blade, a strong wind, a thrashing wave, and Crowley could be taken. Human life, bright as a fire, and doused as easily as a match. 

It is unbelievable to know he has walked this earth for thousands of years without Crowley. It is unbearable to know he will walk it for thousands more.

Aziraphale sees Crowley’s eyes turn to the setting sun, where the spirits of those like him wait. 

They live with a uncrossable chasm between them, with a terribly finite amount of hours together.

They both live under the burden of an eventual end.

This, Aziraphale understands, is what it means to be alive.

\--

This is the grief that makes angels stone. This is the sorrow that causes immortals to wither. 

For hundreds of generations, Aziraphale has walked this world, passing through lives like walking through fields of flowers. Mortal bodies crumble and turn to smoke. They live their brief, brilliant moments, and flicker out with a breath. 

\--

The sameness without Crowley is intolerable. 

Aziraphale despises it. 

The world grows around him, his books, the ones he read to Crowley, his home, they one they shared, the plants, the ones Crowley grew, so careful with every leaf and petal. 

Humans eat and breath and fuck and love and sin and wither.

Constellations spin in the heavens. 

Demons tempt, angels save. 

Forever.

It is unbearable.

And so it will be.

Aziraphale has never viewed immortality as a burden. He does now. He tries to be philosophical about is. Surely, he cannot live forever, at some point hellfire must take him, return his soul to ash. But angels are not inclined be predeterministic about their lives, and this is not a comfort. 

He cannot take it.

“Sure, you can.” He hears Crowley say. “Look at you, you’re doing it right now.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're into immortality angst and mythology then Circe by Madeline Miller is excellent, that's what inspired me to write this.
> 
> Sorry about the ending :(
> 
> Thanks for reading~


End file.
